Yevgeny Chuplinsky

Yevgeny Alexandrovich Chuplinsky (Евге́ний Алекса́ндрович Чупли́нский; born March 14, 1965), known as The Novosibirsk Maniac (Новосибирский маньяк), is a Russian serial killer who killed at least 19 prostitutes in the Novosibirsk Oblast from 1998 to 2005.

The murders were accompanied by dismemberment, extensive mutilations and removal of victims' hearts.

Yevgeny Chuplinsky was born on March 14, 1965, in the city of Novosibirsk.

Little is known about his upbringing, but he graduated school with average grades, and in 1981, he entered a mechanical engineering college.

While studying, he was an active member of the Komsomol.

Between 1984 and 1987, he served with the Soviet Border Troops, where he received physical, ideological and combat training, mastering sambo.

Among his colleagues, he gained infamy as a mercantile hypocrite who, at every opportunity, tried to attract positive attention from his superiors.

After finishing his service, he enlisted in the police force, where he rose to the rank of sergeant.

In 1998, Chuplinsky bought a Lada Samara, after which he began to earn money as a taxi driver.

In November of that year, he committed his first murder.

After that, the bodies of murdered prostitutes were discovered in various desolate areas around Novosibirsk, such as landfills, windbreaks, and hard shoulders of roads.

The victims were beheaded and extensively mutilated, arrows and pentagrams carved on the skin and various amulets were often found near the crime scenes.

The investigators could not reach a consensus whether the killings were ritualistic in nature, or Chuplinsky had done it to simply mislead the authorities.

The killer also never hid the bodies, preferring to place them in easy-to-find locations.

Due to their disfigurements, some of the victims were never identified.

After years of treating them as separate cases, the murders were combined into one case, making it clear that a serial killer was operating in the area.

However, this revelation did not aid the investigation: although two identikits were compiled, they differed from one another, and neither was considered an accurate sketch of the offender.

He first worked as a security guard in the Kirovsky District, but in 2000, he was transferred to the Leninsky District.

By the mid-2000s, the murders suddenly ceased, leading the investigators to believe that the murderer had been jailed for another offense or was deceased.

As a result, his age and possible motives remained unclear for some time.

While interviewing witnesses for possible further clues, authorities found that in 2000 Chuplinsky was forced to switch workplaces because of the aforementioned rumors.

Some prostitutes claimed that after they had been questioned by authorities, Chuplinsky would in turn interrogate them about what they had said in great detail.

One of his garages was inspected with the help of a police dog, but despite its strange behavior, no bodies were located.

Since there was insubstantial evidence to keep him detained, Chuplinsky was released.

In 2003, he retired with a medal for serving with distinction, along with 46 letters of gratitude and recommendations from his employers.

After his retirement, with the help of his wife's parents, Chuplinsky founded a chain of shops where he sold wall decorations made from metal.

He married three times, had two children and supported the United Russia party led by Vladimir Putin.

Chuplinsky first came to the attention of the investigators in 2004, even before the murders were combined into one, in connection to the disappearance of one woman, whose body was never found.

On the night of her disappearance, a new SIM card was inserted into the victim's mobile phone, registered to Yevgeny Chuplinsky.

The detainee said that he worked as a taxi driver, and that two young men to whom he had given a lift had left the phone in his car.

When he was asked to give an official testimony, Chuplinsky changed his story, claiming that the young men had unsuccessfully attempted to rob him, and had dropped the phone in the process.

The changing stories seemed insignificant to the investigators, who later released him.

In 2006, when all the cases were combined, much circumstantial evidence pointed towards Chuplinsky.

In particular, although he claimed to have never met one of the victims, investigations had uncovered that she was a prostitute who was familiar with Chuplinsky.

His own co-workers told of rumors that he ran a protection racket centered on sex workers, including in areas where some murders took place.

Because of this, Chuplinsky was arrested.

In October 2015, a taxi driver named Alexei Ivanov was arrested by investigators who suspected him of being the Novosibirsk Maniac.

While Ivanov later confessed to and was convicted of several unrelated murders, he was ultimately cleared from those attributed to the Maniac of Novosibirsk.

Despite large-scale investigations by police and several arrests, Chuplinsky was only arrested in 2016, and sentenced to life imprisonment two years later.

In 2016, the Investigative Committee began conducting tests using DNA, requesting that all suspects, including Chuplinsky, provide a sample.